Gilgamesh Page 4
His head resting on his drawn up knees,
Wondering how much fatigue
A man could stand.
He raised his head to speak:
I know I have broken them;
What difference now.
I only want to speak to Utnapishtim,
To reach his shore.
Can you help me?
Perhaps, the boatman said, but I have questions
To ask first. Why are your cheeks so thin?
Your eyes so full of grief?
What have you known of loss
That makes you different from other men?
Don’t ask me to retell my pain, he said.
I only want to bring him back to life.
Whom? asked Urshanabi, and he laughed
At the presumption in this quest.
He was my friend, pleaded Gilgamesh,
Unconscious once again of audience and pain.
Recounting flowed from him
Like music played by someone else.
My younger brother who saved me from
The Bull of Heaven and Humbaba,
Who listened to my dreams,
Who shared my pain.
Why did he have to die?
He would have stayed with me in death.
He would not have let me die alone.
He was a friend.
He stopped, realizing
He had not come this far to hear himself
Recall the failure of his grief to save
But to find an end to his despair.
Which is the way to Utnapishtim? I must know!
Is it the sea? the mountains? I will go there!
I told you, Urshanabi said;
The stone images are destroyed.
If you had been as reverent with them
As with your friend, they might have helped you cross.
What else? What else is there?
There must be something else!
You are exhausting me, the boatman said.
I do not think that you will be serene
Ever, or at peace enough for others
Not to be exhausted by your presence
Until, at last, you lose by your own hand
The very thing you crave to hold alone.
Don’t moralize at me! I have no love
For images, old gods, prophetic words.
I want to talk to Utnapishtim!
Tell me how.
Take your ax in your hand, said Urshanabi;
Go down into the forest, cut down
A boatload of long trees
And set them with bitumen.* They will be your poles
To push yourself across the sea of death.
When Gilgamesh heard this, he went to work.
And when the poles were cut and set with
Bitumen, the two men boarded Urshanabi’s ship
And sailed the channel toward the sea of death.
***
Now Gilgamesh was alone. The boatman’s voice
Could still be heard, but faintly, from the shore.
Don’t let the waters touch your hand.
Take a second pole, a third, a fourth
When each is rotted by the sea of death.
When he had used each pole but one
He pulled his clothes off his body
And with this last remaining pole
He made a mast, his clothes as sail,
And drifted on the sea of death.
***
Utnapishtim stood on the other shore,
His old and rugged features worn
By the seas and deserts he himself had crossed.
He wondered why the Sacred Stones had been destroyed,
Why the boat was only drifting.
And who the man was
Who resembled loss itself.
Before the ship had touched his shore he thought,
I am afraid that nothing here can help him.
The eyes of Utnapishtim seemed so full
Of hospitality
When Gilgamesh awoke
From his exhaustion.
As if some faces could be doorways in-
To life one has an image of
But never sees. The vista was
A strange and beautiful
Release.
Utnapishtim was the only one whom he had met
On his journey who did not add to
His fatigue.
Gilgamesh was speaking but only to relieve
His weight of grief,
Not to demand an understanding:
My friend has died so many times in me,
And yet he still seems so alive,
Like a younger brother,
Then suddenly like soft tissue,
A dried leaf.
I was afraid.
Is there something more than death?
Some other end to friendship?
I came to you whom they call “The Distant,”
I crossed the mountains and the sea.
I was like a blind man, but not one
From whom someone in search can draw light.
I am so tired, so tired. I have
Killed bear, hyena, stag, ibex for food
And clothes. I barely crossed the sea of death.
Utnapishtim raised his hand and touched the shoulder
Of the younger man to put him at his ease.
Two things encourage me to hope, he said;
That one can come this far to bring life to a friend
And that you understand how we must borrow light
From the blind. (My own right eye was damaged long ago
And my left is slowly decaying.)
Friendship is vowing toward immortality
And does not know the passing away of beauty
(Though take care!)
Because it aims for the spirit.
Many years ago through loss I learned
That love is wrung from our inmost heart
Until only the loved one is and we are not.
You have known, O Gilgamesh,
What interests me,
To drink from the Well of Immortality.
Which means to make the dead
Rise from their graves
And the prisoners from their cells,
The sinners from their sins.
I think love’s kiss kills our heart of flesh.
It is the only way to eternal life,
Which should be unbearable if lived
Among the dying flowers
And the shrieking farewells
Of the overstretched arms of our spoiled hopes.
I think compassion is our God’s pure act
Which burns forever,
And be it in Heaven or in Hell
Doesn’t matter for me; because
Hell is the everlasting gift
Of His presence
To the lonely heart who is longing
Amidst perishing phantoms and doesn’t care
To find any immortality
If not in the pure loneliness of the Holy One,
This loneliness which He enjoys forever
Inside and outside of His creation.
It is enough for one who loves
To find his Only One singled in Himself.
And that is the cup of immortality!
Gilgamesh looked into the face of the older man
In whom he saw this loneliness.
He could still feel the touch of Utnapishtim’s hand.
Time and space were uneventful now.
Nothing inclined him to impatience.
They talked together, walked
And sat on rocks.
The older man seemed pleased
To have his company
As if an absent son or other loss
Had been slightly returned to him.
In time the younger felt
He knew him well enough
To say:
You sometimes seem to have a downcast look
&nb
sp; As if the life you have found here still
Has failed to bring you peace.
How did you come to find this world
And reach this life?
I did not come out of desire like you,
Said Utnapishtim; I was the choice of others.
They walked along the shore
And the older man told his story.
There was a city called Shurrupak
On the bank of the Euphrates.
It was very old and so many were the gods
Within it. They converged in their complex hearts
On the idea of creating a great flood.
There was Anu, their aging and weak-minded father,
The military Enlil, his adviser,
Ishtar, the sensation craving one,
And all the rest Ea, who was present
At their council, came to my house
And, frightened by the violent winds that filled the air,
Echoed all that they were planning and had said.
Man of Shurrupak, he said, tear down your house
And build a ship. Abandon your possessions
And the works that you find beautiful and crave
And save your life instead. Into the ship
Bring the seed of all the living creatures.
I was overawed, perplexed,
And finally downcast I agreed to do
As Ea said but I protested: What shall I say
To the city, the people, the leaders?
Tell them, Ea said, you have learned that Enlil
The war god despises you and will not
Give you access to the city anymore.
Tell them for this Ea will bring the rains.
That is the way gods think, he laughed. His tone,
Of savage irony frightened Gilgamesh
Yet gave him pleasure, being his friend.
They only know how to compete or echo.
But who am I to talk? He sighed as if
Disgusted with himself; I did as he
Commanded me to do. I spoke to them
And some came out to help me build the ship
Of seven stories each with nine chambers.
The boat was cube in shape, and sound; it held
The food and wine and precious minerals
And seed of living animals we put
In it. My family then moved inside
And all who wanted to be with us there:
The game of the field, the goats of the Steppe,
The craftsmen of the city came, a navigator
Came. And then Ea ordered me to close
The door. The time of the great rains had come.
O there was ample warning, yes, my friend,
But it was terrifying still. Buildings
Blown by the winds for miles like desert brush.
People clung to branches of trees until
Roots gave way. New possessions, now debris,
Floated on the water with their special
Sterile vacancy. The riverbanks failed
To hold the water back. Even the gods
Cowered like dogs at what they had done.
Ishtar cried out like a woman at the height
Of labor: O how could I have wanted
To do this to my people! They were hers,
Notice. Even her sorrow was possessive.
Her spawn that she had killed too soon.
Old gods are terrible to look at when
They weep, all bloated like spoiled fish.
One wonders if they ever understand
That they have caused their grief. When the seventh day
Came, the flood subsided from its slaughter
Like hair drawn slowly back
From a tormented face.
I looked at the earth and all was silence.
Bodies lay like alewives dead
And in the clay. I fell down
On the ship’s deck and wept. Why? Why did they
Have to die! I couldn’t understand. I asked
Unanswerable questions a child asks
When a parent dies—for nothing. Only slowly
Did I make myself believe—or hope—they
Might all be swept up in their fragments
Together
And made whole again
By some compassionate hand.
But my hand was too small
To do the gathering.
I have only known this feeling since
When I look out across the sea of death,
This pull inside against a littleness—myself—
Waiting for an upward gesture.
O the dove, the swallow and the raven
Found their land. The people left the ship.
But I for a long time could only stay inside.
I could not face the deaths I knew were there.
Then I received Enlil, for Ea had chosen me;
The war god touched my forehead; he blessed
My family and said:
Before this you were just a man, but now
You and your wife shall be like gods. You
Shall live in the distance at the rivers’ mouth,
At the source. I allowed myself to be
Taken far away from all that I had seen.
Sometimes even in love we yearn to leave mankind.
Only the loneliness of the Only One
Who never acts like gods
Is bearable.
I am downcast because of what I’ve seen,
Not what I still have hope to yearn for.
Lost youths restored to life,
Lost children to their crying mothers,
Lost wives, lost friends, lost hopes, lost homes,
I want to bring these back to them.
But now there is you.
We must find something for you.
How will you find eternal life
To bring back to your friend?
He pondered busily, as if
It were just a matter of getting down to work
Or making plans for an excursion.
Then he relaxed, as if there were no use
In this reflection. I would grieve
At all that may befall you still
If I did not know you must return
And bury your own loss and build
Your world anew with your own hands.
I envy you your freedom.
As he listened, Gilgamesh felt tiredness again
Come over him, the words now so discouraging,
The promise so remote, so unlike what he sought.
He looked into the old man’s face, and it seemed changed,
As if this one had fought within himself a battle
He would never know, that still went on.
They returned to Utnapishtim’s house
And to his aged wife who seemed to Gilgamesh
In her shufflings and her faithful silence
Like a servant only there to hold the door.
He hardly knew her as a person,
He had talked only to Utnapishtim,
Been only with him.
Was she all he needed as companion?
Yet when he fell asleep and Utnapishtim
Remarked to his wife with hostile irony:
Look at the strong man who wants life;
Sleep follows him like his shadow,
She said to her husband:
Touch him again and wake him
So he can return in peace to his home.
She had learned to read her husband’s moods.
Men are deceitful and incapable of peace.
I know! He said. Can’t he even stay awake with me?
Sleep is like death only slothful people yearn for.
Bake loaves, he ordered her, and put them at his head
One for each day he sleeps.
We’ll see how long it is before he wakes.
Over her frail protest the trial was set.
After some days, Utnapi
shtim woke the younger man
Who thought he had barely gone to sleep.
You have slept for seven days, he said.
Look at the dried out loaves my wife has baked.
How will you bear eternal life?
It is not easy to live like gods.
What can I do to win eternal life?
The younger pleaded.
Wherever I go—even here—I am drawn back
To death.
Austerely Utnapishtim called out to the boatman
On the other shore and scolded him
For sending Gilgamesh across.
Return him to your shore, he called.
Bathe him and burn these pelts he wears
Which can only remind him of his friend.
Let him be fresh and young again.
Let the band around his head be changed.
Let him return to his city untired.
His people need the sight of something new,
And the appearance of success.
His words sounded bitter.
I came for wisdom only, shouted Gilgamesh.
Don’t hurt an old man further with your praise.
I have nothing to give you that will save.
Urshanabi crossed in his ship and obeyed.
He took the pelts from Gilgamesh,
And though the grieving man
Was too disheartened to protest,
When they were taken from him and burned
He cried out as if a festered wound had just
Been pierced. When it was over
He stood in the bow to leave
With only inner traces of his journey.
Utnapishtim contemplated him, unable to speak.
As if he were afraid of some desire to retain,
He looked down at the ground, away from Gilgamesh.
His wife whispered to him, saying: